Archive for January, 2015

A few years ago I was lamenting my cable bill with a friend who told me she had recently told her cable company she wanted to cancel her service because, based on how little she watched TV, she couldn’t justify the monthly fee. Rather than lose a customer, the cable company offered a steep discount. I’ve heard of others who have used the same strategy successfully.

One of the many things I enjoy about marketing is attempting to generate the most results with the least among of time, money and effort. I want to get more for less. From an advertising standpoint, that means, for instance, that just because the Super Bowl pulls in a large audience each year, it may not make sense to put your message in front of that audience unless a significant percentage of it might represent potential customers for your products or services.

Social media is a lot like that. Just because social media can deliver an international audience doesn’t mean that it makes sense for you to be out there communicating with an international audience. In fact, for many businesses, (more…)

One of the benefits—and potential downfalls—of the online environment is that it is a great equalizer. The smallest company, including solo operations, can present a “big company” feel, effectively competing against the big players in their industries. This can also present a downside, of course, for those seeking goods and services from online providers; all that glitters is not, necessarily, gold, so caveat emptor certainly applies.

Still, for small companies, and even individual practitioners in service industries like consulting, law, accounting, engineering, etc., it can be relatively easy to establish a strong presence online.

We’ve done that for our own marketing needs, and we work with a variety of other small businesses and independent consultants to help them establish a “big brand” online. In doing this, we have found some very important best practices that really must be adopted to generate results: (more…)

Despite the surge in mobile phones, tablets and texting, email communication remains a common way to connect with various audiences—internal and external. Yet, because it remains so common, those communicating via email face several challenges: getting their email to their intended user, keeping their email out of the spam/junk folder and, ultimately, having their email opened and read.

One key way to boost the odds that these things will happen is often overlooked or not given the consideration it deserves: (more…)

Blogs continue to be a great communication tool for marketers of any size, in any industry. Blogs have two “big benefits”:

They help you stay engaged with your audience in, hopefully, valued ways—keeping you “top of mind” when members of the audience are in need of your goods or services

They aid in driving traffic to your website – because blogs are (or, at least, should be) updated with new posts regularly, your content will be fresh, and will contain relevant key words and phrases that can boost SEO

We have a blog that we’ve been posting to since 2009. We also manage blogs for a number of clients. In our work we’ve discovered some important best practices: (more…)

I’m a big fan of EContent, a media outlet that focuses on content related to digital publishing, media and marketing. They have a number of very influential contributors* who write about trending topics, and useful strategies and tactics to help readers succeed in the online world.

It’s one of the many media outlets that I try to read as often as I can. Recently, when browsing through the topics on their homepage, I came across a piece by Theresa Cramer, the editor of EContent: Lessons From Serial: The Myth of the Shrinking Attention Span. I found it to be a very thought-provoking piece, and I was especially struck by one particular line in the piece: (more…)

I’ve said it often and will continue to say it to groups I have the opportunity to engage with around marketing communications issues: “If you don’t have a web site you virtually (pun intended) don’t exist.” Think about it. (more…)

As of July 1, Jeff Haden’s June 8, 2015, LinkedIn post, “7 Things Employees Wish They Could Tell Their Bosses,” had grown to about 481,000 views, more than 1,800 likes, and 307 comments. Haden, a ghostwriter and speaker, is a LinkedIn Influencer. Similar to other Influencers, his posts often go viral. Most of those who are attempting to engage with an audience online, though, struggle to generate even 100 views. What can the masses learn from online influencers, whether they are the capital “I” LinkedIn variety or from a wider array of content outlets? (more…)

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